


rising naked from the well

by sprx77



Series: Sapphic September 2018 [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Humor, But there's EVEN MORE plot!!!, Canon typical mentions of violence but none on screen, Declarations Of Love, Dry Humping, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Extremely brief mention of suicidal thoughts, F/F, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Grinding, Happy Ending, Hokage Monument, Holding Someone Down by the Wrists, Humor, I'm proud of me, Is there a tag for, It's not porn you guys!!!, Mentioned Orochimaru/Minato, Nothing Hurts and Nobody Dies, Okay there's a little porn, Truth Serum, slight polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 18:13:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16101074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: Mikoto is dosed with truth serum on a mission. Despite wanting to cut out her own tongue rather than talk to people in this state, she has no choice but to live life as usual. Except Kushina.Kushina she avoids like the plague.





	rising naked from the well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/gifts).



Footsteps came closer, whisper-silent along the path. Mikoto knew who it was, knew what she had to say. Knew that explanations were due, more than the blurted-out truth of earlier-- when the effects of the serum had hit their climax and Mikoto had panicked, chest too tight and needing to _run_. She rested her forehead against her arms for one more selfish moment.

But Mikoto has never counted herself a coward.

She took a deep breath for stability.

Lifted her weary head and repeated herself:

“I can’t lie.”

Even to her own ears she sounded so _tired_ , if not completely defeated just yet. Tear tracks were cold on her face.

“Oh, neither can I.” Said Kushina, cheerful. Flippant.

Mikoto balked. Her first instinct was irritation, but she smothered it.

“Explain.”

“Kurama can feel negative emotions and treachery, so when I lie-- even to myself! —he senses it without even trying to. _His_ hackles go up because it’s his nature, but he loves me, so he tries to ignore it, and basically, the long and short of it is: I get awful migraines if I try to lie.” She shrugged. The movement knocked hair back and Mikoto’s eyes jerked to the tiny motion as if it was a senbon flying.

“Your hair is so beautiful.” She murmured, not even fighting it. “Also, that explains so much about you.”

Kushina hummed, kicking her feet.

“You think so?” And though she twirled some of that long glorious hair in front of her shoulder, Mikoto couldn’t tell which comment she meant.

“Yes.” She said. Both.

“So you’re in good company, at least, is what I meant. ‘Ttebane.”

Kushina abruptly laid back, waves and waves of red cushioning her as she looked up at the sky. Fading sunlight gilded the bridge of her nose, the strength of her brow. It laid down as a satisfied cat along her cheeks and Mikoto’s throat grew tight when Kushina made a pleased noise like the same.

Her feet still dangled freely over the cliff face.

No compulsion urged Mikoto to speak; she did not have the words to explain how light and red and curving smiles, pale lashes, a thousand tiny things--like raindrops combining into a greater cloud—mushed up together and settled painfully behind her ribs, kicking like Itachi had for weeks.

No words, but they did choke her voice. They did feel like pressure under her chin, like a kunai to the fleshy underside of lymph nodes, vulnerable and tight. They did, those thousand thousand things, slip just beneath the top layer of her skin, hover there, and raise all the hair on her arms.

Mikoto looked at Kushina, laid out on the monument, and a thousand things about her were too beautiful for words, too strong to be contained by something so puny as a truth serum. The feelings had no accompanying words, mere physical sensations only, and most of them she was used to.

She was so comprised. The worst part was that she didn’t even care. The symptoms of her failure swept over her, tingles and urges, and she smiled soft and shaky.

The worst, of course, was the urge that settled into her hand like a physical ache. Her fingers burned to brush through Kushina’s hair, to pull her head, perhaps, into Mikoto’s lap, to trace and _touch_. She kept them firmly buried in her lap instead.

Took another breath to relieve some of the stress on her lungs.

Immediately blurted out on the exhale: “I want to play with your hair.”

Because, like an idiot, she’d gotten so swept up in the familiar iron shackles of self-control that she allowed her nebulous, overwhelmed—safe--thoughts to mutate into the singular.

Thankfully, Kushina was dense. She was probably the most emotionally aware shinobi in the village, capable of pinpointing and discerning other people’s tells with terrifying accuracy, and that was _before_ she befriended an empathic god who never slept.

But Mikoto could strip naked and dance on her lap—the insides of her thighs _cried out_ with ache at the phantom sensation, the imagined feel of Kushina’s legs parting hers—and Kushina would probably laugh and play along.

She’s infuriating incapable of applying that emotional intelligence when it comes to _herself_. Mikoto isn’t the only woman in love with Kushina, who walks into walls when she walks down the streets, glistening with sweat, after training.

She’s just the one with the best shot, and isn’t that sad?

Case in point: “Oooh, yes.” Kushina wiggles over immediately, putting her head into Mikoto’s lap.

Mikoto can perhaps be forgiven for how lax her mental regulation has become, thoughts darting down well-worn paths of longing and frustration.

Mikoto, no fool, wastes zero time dragging her fingers through Kushina’s hair.

“Pretty boy had better appreciate having this all the time,” She mutters.

Kushina hums with pleasure. Mikoto chokes, but again: it’s more wordless feeling, the swelling greatness she isn’t compelled to confess. Why was she so worried? It’s easy enough to keep it quiet, keep her best friend from noticing.

Easier still with white masks between them, hair tied back, moving effortless through the trees and shadows. They don’t often speak on duet missions, though it’s not something she notices until after. It’s never a _lack_. They fall together as easy as breathing, as perfect as anything. The silent communication makes them a flawless killing machine.

Minato is like a star in comparison.

Not for the first time, Mikoto thinks: _she would be Kage if they knew her, if I hadn’t taken her with me into the dark._

Because to be ANBU one had to be a generic jounin, competent but relatively unremarkable. Minato could never go into ANBU.

And Mikoto wouldn’t have lived long without it.

Neither would Fugaku have, to be fair. Rage and frustration at her situation, at the lack of choice, of autonomy, had clawed at her throat from the inside out, made worse for her silence, made worse for her stoic endurance, and though she smiled and nodded and played at demure, at being barely-jonin and ready to retire, she was two steps away from throwing herself on an enemy kunai and making it look like an accident.

Each mission brought her closer to a nominally temporary—but who did they think they were kidding?—retirement, of boxing up Mikoto into a civilian housewife, and she _loved_ her clan, had agreed to it, had no choice for that blood that ran in her. It had been like sprinting down a tunnel with a bijuu at the end, because Mikoto was loyalty and pride and tearing herself apart, but she wasn’t going to let it happen. She couldn’t have the future she wanted-- ambition cut down ruthlessly by _duty_ , and not the one she had answered with blood and sweat and accomplishment-- and she couldn’t bear the future she was getting, so she was going to make her own future in the guise of something honorable.

Except she couldn’t, because Izuna’s blood was strongest in her, and she _did_ have a duty, but more importantly: Kushina was there, torture and salvation rolled up in one, but it was the _sweetest_ kind of suffering, the kind that led to years and years of almost-enough, of team missions and comradery and hours and days alone but for the beating of their hearts.

Pretty boy had better _love_ her until he died.

She didn’t notice she was crying again until Kushina reached up and cupped her face, dragging one thumb over a tear track. Stupidly, her breath hitched.

“I’m so lucky to know you.” Mikoto said.

The maudlin thoughts at least keep away the prurient, the magnitude of what she feels for Kushina a thousand times more important than the superficial physical wants—as though what she longs to make with their bodies could hold a candle to how she wants to lay in the dark for hours and hours with their hearts pressed close—but. But isn’t that doing them a disservice?

As though the black and red and pale—and shimmering, shimmering gold—connection of them could be anything less than magnificent, than _perfection_ , as though the yearning for it didn’t ache beneath her breast?

It wasn’t only about the sex.

Mikoto burned with it.

And laying across Kushina’s lap, wind cooling tear tracks on her cheeks, Mikoto said as much, compelled by the poison on an enemy blade, hardly aware of the murmur vibrating her lips.

Motion, movement, the world tilted in a spinning blur.

No shunshin; Kushina had taken her and _rolled_ them, dangerously close to the cliff’s edge, and their backs hit the grass in turn for several rotations before they came to a grass-covered stop, Kushina’s weight bearing down on her gorgeously.

Mikoto could write sonnets describing the face above her, red framing a heart-shaped face, if her hands had been more suited to ink-brush over the biting grip of a blade.

That was okay, though—some part of her thought viciously—Kushina’s hands were made for a sword, calloused fingers putting lost kenjutsu to work—last of her kind, last of her _name_ , and Amaterasu, the way she moved, the way she put all that anger and loneliness into a snarl and tore their enemies _apart_ with it!

They _matched_.

Mikoto would hold on to that with her _teeth_.

The back of her wrists hit the dirt hard, pressure following, and Mikoto struggled just to feel Kushina’s grip get tighter. The breath whooshed out of her lungs.

“ _Say that again_.”

Even in a white mask, Kushina grinned, a bloodthirsty thing flying through the trees. Joy was a part of her—a vicious joy, a clawed-for joy, a spiteful joy in the face of a genocide—and it curled now in the hidden space of her scowl, the whites of her eyes as she fixed Mikoto with the most intense look she’d ever received from her, brows drawn tight.

Impatiently—and that, too, was familiar—she shook Mikoto’s wrists, teeth bared.

“Say it!”

And it was ripped from her like a screaming babe, like a burden unfused from her flesh.

“Of _course_ I’m in love with you!” Mikoto screamed, too close and too much. “I’ve always _been_ in love with you, this isn’t new!”

She wrenched hard against Kushina’s grip, momentarily slack with surprise, and got right in her face—nearly a headbut, if Kushina’s reflexes weren’t what they were—and chest pressed to shoulder, before Kushina snarled and shoved her back down hard.

Her back hit the ground painfully and this time Kushina’s weight followed, forearms trapping hers, so that Kushina’s torso could help with the pin. It put them nose to nose and Mikoto bared her teeth, had always reacted to vulnerability with steel.

The side of Kushina’s nose pressed flush to hers, they were so close, violet eyes assessing.

Mikoto still struggled, couldn’t _stop_ , but then she did—oh, she did—because Kushina’s slow grin was like dawn, a perfect dawn when it was the two of them so far outside the village that loyalty was just a suggestion, white masks and the promise on anonymity wiping last names from the picture, when it was just two heartbeats in the lightening dark.

All the fight left her in a rush. Mikoto stared back, helplessly.

And it was Kushina, bold and fearless, who dipped her head down to kiss.

It was a simple thing, a gentle press, and it unwove some deep knot within Mikoto’s chest—a glass lock shattering quietly, a maelstrom set free.

She kissed back.

Gravity pins her in place, fire burns, tides change and Mikoto kisses Kushina back, because she was made a very certain way, and there’s nothing in her to resist.

And everything in her to rise.

On golden wings her spirit soars up, beating against the ceiling of her heart, and it drowns out anything else. One of her hands tangles in a drape of glorious red, and Kushina’s beautiful lips part for her, and then they’re rolling, again, leaves and twigs tangling in clothes and hair.

They could fall off the cliff, but Mikoto already knows they won’t.

A thigh slides between hers, perfect pressure, and her mouth falls open in a gasp. Smug lips touch hers, steal kisses like lingering laughs, and Mikoto takes that contagious joy but can’t mirror it, too desperate. Her lips catch Kushina’s, over and over, and it’s like drowning. Mikoto drags both hands through Kushina's hair, keeping her close, pressing as near as she can.

She gets light-headed alarmingly quickly, but can’t quite care.

In a moment, Kushina will remember all the reasons she shouldn’t be indulging Mikoto—will realize all the reasons why this is a bad idea, not what she wants…

Mikoto growls, baring her teeth into a sweet kiss, and Kushina rises above her, a wave of scarlet laughter. Her kisses sooth and ignite in tandem, giggling but playful—teeth skim her bottom lip, teasing brushes of lips against hers pulling back before she can match the pressure, fleeting and only half-there. Mikoto follows, only for Kushina to pull her head back, but Mikoto shifts her grip and pulls her back in.

“You are the most _aggravating_ creature,” She is compelled to say, though to be honest? She’s never had much of a filter around Kushina, save for certain clandestine truths etched around her heart.

Kushina throws her head back and _laughs_ , the vibrations of which shake down Mikoto’s wrists.

It’s with a wide, wide grin that Kushina leans back in, gleeful. She rests her forehead against Mikoto’s like it’s nothing. Mikoto’s heart clenches _violently_.

They’re both a little short of breath, though already pure habit has them correcting that.

It hits Mikoto again that Kushina is in her lap, soft and perfect, and her lips sting from a multitude of kisses. Breath fans out cool against her mouth. For a moment she is struck _dumb_ , and they breathe the same air, but then Kushina turns her head just so and ducks her lips to kiss Mikoto’s neck and—

Oh.

 _Oh_ , Mikoto thinks. They’re really doing this. Something. There’s a greedy, giddy drum under her pulse and it beats, it beats: _take this, take this, stop asking stupid questions_.

She tilts her chin to make it easier and Kushina purrs appreciation.

Kushina’s thigh presses in against her just as teeth tease at her neck and _nope_ , fuck it, Mikoto is _gone_. She gasps to suck in air, fingers spasming in Kushina’s hair, and Kushina laughs wet into her skin.

“Look at you,” Kushina hums, pleased. The murmur is something she can feel, goosebumps following the words. Pressure, sweet pressure, of Kushina’s soft bust contrasting Kushina’s _hard_ thigh, muscular and strong and shifting against her in all the right ways, the weight of her a sweet thing, a _lovely_ thing.

Her hands wiggle between them, dainty and calloused, and they slip up Mikoto’s shirt like it’s not even there, tracing fire into her ribs.

Mikoto’s head tips back, neck on full display; the ground is hard under her, grass and stone, and she can’t care, arches away from it to _grind_ herself on Kushina’s thigh—Kushina pushes into her gamely, laughing— _rasping_ out a laugh because her voice is about three decibels lower, rough from their play, and fuck, _fuck_.

Mikoto opens her mouth to complain, but what comes out is all vowels, a long keening cry as her hands slip free of Kushina’s hair, but don’t go far—they slip around Kushina’s shoulders, forearms tight to her back, and pin her close.

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Kushina says, awed, and one hand slips from where it had been stroking Mikoto’s abs. Mikoto whines, missing it, but Kushina merely uses it as a brace over Mikoto’s head, support with which she gains leverage to _rock_ into Mikoto’s hips, a half-thrust that sparks pleasure all up Mikoto’s spine.

She uses her own arms, wrapped around Kushina’s shoulders, and thrusts back just as good. She’s got one of Kushina’s legs between hers, which means they’re in the same boat, and hooks her free leg around Kushina’s waist to make it slow, just a little dirty.

Kushina groans, low and loud—unashamed—and stray strands of her hair come down between them. Mikoto doesn’t realize she’s worked up a sweat until they stick to her skin, but then it’s impossible to ignore. The whole temperature of Fire Country seems to have risen in the space between them, regardless of the darkening twilight around.

Then it’s the kind of back and forth you _dream_ about, or at least Mikoto does when she’s lucky, grasping fingers and hot, distracted kisses. They shift until the way they slot together is perfect, a tangle of legs and flawless pressure.

Each thrust makes Mikoto’s stomach clench, tighter and tighter, pleasure unfurling in her veins until it’s like spring, cherry blossoms as far as they eye can see across the groves of Upper Konoha. Her thighs shake, sweat sticky across her brow. Kushina kisses her: lingering, messy, gasping.

Her moans paint the air; when Mikoto can keep her eyes open, she catches snatches of ecstasy written across her face. Kushina gasps, and exhales out a loud cry, _riding_ Mikoto’s thigh and--

Mikoto shakes apart in her arms.

When she comes down from it, fireflies still blinking in her vision, Kushina has slumped on top of her. Unable to resist, or even think clearly, Mikoto reaches out to pet her hair. Pretty, pretty partner. Gorgeous woman pressing weight onto her, sweaty like she’s just finished a hard day’s training.

Mikoto is weak for it, for the familiar smell and the way shocky, skittering bits of pleasure play out between her thighs when Kushina’s labored breathing moves her body half an inch.

The _weight_ of her. Mikoto gets the blinding flash of images, too good to dream of now that she _knows_ what Kushina is like in the sack—those thighs wrapped around her waist as she slams Kushina into a wall after they get home from a mission; falling into a _bed,_ feathers everywhere; a steamy bath where she _doesn’t_ have to keep polite distance, where she can slide over and instigate the slip of wet skin on wet skin—

Kushina mutters something into her tits. Mikoto doesn’t stop stroking her back.

“You’re narrating again.” Kushina lifts her head to repeat, and Mikoto stills.

She frowns.

“I could burn down the _entirety_ of Takigakure.” She says, voice as hard as it can be after a fantastic orgasm with the—literal—girl of her dreams.

“Don’t say that, ‘te—‘ttebane.” Kushina says around a yawn. “You can’t blame what missing nin do on their village. And besides.”

She snuggled closer.

“Think of how today would have gone if you _hadn’t_ confessed your undying love to me.”

Mikoto huffed, because _of course_ Kushina would find levity in the situation. A helpless smile stole across her lips; the afterglow, obviously.

Fondness slid in behind her heart, nimbly dodging her attempts to smash it.

Crickets chirp; it’s too early in the year for cicadas.

Mikoto blinks.

“Did we just fool around on _Minato’s head_?” She demands, and she would have shot upright into a sitting position if not for Kushina’s weight pinning her down. She relaxed back into the earth with an ‘oof.’

Kushina cackles, merry and bright.

“Ha! I’ll have to tell him that. He gets so adorably pink in the face, the loser.”

Cold rushes through Mikoto’s veins a little. As the post-orgasm high fades, she realizes again _just why_ she wasn’t supposed to sleep with her best friend. Though Mikoto has gone her entire life without fearing a man, she would start wars for Kushina’s happiness, so she opens her mouth.

“He won’t be mad?”

Kushina snorts, an ugly thing at close range. Mikoto grimaces, rolls her eyes.

“Minato?” She demands, as if surprised. “Nah. He couldn’t be. You’re my exception.”

A pause; there is quiet on the mountain path, save for the sounds of nature.

“I’m your _what_?”

Bright purple eyes gleam at her, relaxed and curious.

“You know, my exception. The ‘one person you would sleep with immediately, no questions asked, if they offered’. And you don’t have to ask first, because you tell your spouse upfront, and they say ‘yeah, if you suddenly have the opportunity of a lifetime, go for it.’” She says, like it’s nothing.

“I—you— _what_?” Mikoto sputters. “That’s not—that’s not a thing.” Weakly, she tries to imagine how much happier she and Fugaku would be if that were a thing.

Already, she dreads going home to explain her transgressions, though with their type of arranged marriages there’s a certain _expectation_ of discrete ‘excursions’.

“It’s totally a thing.” Kushina pops her lips. “Minato’s is Orochimaru.”

“I—” The serum won’t allow her to lie. “I am stunned that that’s apparently a thing.”

Kushina beams at her. Then, abruptly, she rolls off. Alarmed, Mikoto reaches after her, but she hasn’t gone far. Kushina lies on her back next to her, close enough to rest her head on Mikoto’s shoulder when she offers an arm.

It’s cool enough, here at the end of summer, that they can stay out here for a while.

They stargaze for a comfortable, quiet handful of moments; until their breathing evens out and their hands slip together, almost unnoticed, fingers twining in the dark.

It’s not the truth serum that has Mikoto turning her head to see Kushina’s face, dirt-smeared and bleached pale in the starlight.

“You’d be my exception, too.” She says quietly. It feels too small for the feeling in her chest, the yawning chasm so great and overwhelming even a truth serum can’t force her to explain.

Kushina gets her, though, can and does understand her without any words at all.

“I know.” She says, simply.

Her hand, tight in Mikoto’s, gives her fingers a reassuring squeeze.

And despite the serum flooding her veins, the mess she’s made of many interactions today, and any unpleasant conversations that loom, Kushina is beside her. Kushina is with her. Together they can take down armies before they form, infiltrate any hideout, cut through any enemy before them. It’s something Mikoto knows deep in her bones, when words and logic fail her.

As long as they’re together, everything will be okay.

She squeezed back.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic gave me so much grief. I wrote it in bits and pieces and I'm still not the happiest with it, but I do like it enough to post. I am, as always, _not_ accepting criticism, constructive or otherwise. Don't point out any errors or differences from canon.
> 
> I would, however, love to hear what you liked or found interesting. [my tumblr](http://definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com)


End file.
